finding document class file

[Urs Liska]

Hi, this is my first post, actually the trigger to subscribing (again).

I'm not sure if this is a valid question for this list, but I hope for
some negligence if it isn't.

After some fiddling I managed to get TeXLive to find .sty files in a
local directory below ~/git/latex, making it think this is the local
texmf tree root.

After this "hello world" test I'll work on getting an earlier - pretty
complex - project set-up to work again on a new computer after my laptop
has been stolen. The compilation stops, not finding the document class
file :-( However, the class file is not in something as a texmf tree
(which I use to place manually installed or in-repository packages
into), but in the working tree of my project repository. So I would
either have to use the class through a relative path or declare a given
directory as a root that should be searched recursively to find files.

Any suggestions would be helpful. And again, sorry if the question is
inappropriate.

Best and thank you
Urs